The ability to block and/or spoof caller ID information, while oftentimes legitimate, is problematic, such as when the caller is pranking or harassing the party he or she is calling. If the party is calling an emergency service and is disconnected before relaying important information about the emergency, this is further problematic. Unfortunately, for non-Inward WATS subscribers (i.e., those without toll-free service), in such instances, it is difficult or impossible to determine who is calling in a timely fashion.
Still further, even if one has an accurate phone number of the calling party, one does not always have the name of the party. This information might be obtainable from other databases or sources, but is not necessarily provided along with the caller ID information. Solutions to this problem have been found by the inventors, including in their U.S. Pat. Nos. 8,369,508, 9,270,816, and others which involve routing calls to an Inward WATS number and back to the called party. This solution allows an accurate number of a calling party to be displayed to the called party; however, this typically uses the caller ID (calling line identification) protocol to populate the data with ANI information.
As some telecommunication companies have caught up with the problems of insecure caller ID, a problem with the above system has arisen in recent years, in that caller ID information cannot be populated with additional information on a receiving device of a called party. Some phones, notably phones from Apple Computer, at the time of this writing, simply only support a number in Caller ID and do not support displaying additional Caller ID information for a call. Thus, new methods are needed to provide a called party with true, accurate, and/or additional information about a calling party beyond simply the calling party's phone number.